I had been hoping to be the only New York City theatre critic/blogger/writer not to mention the Broadway strike. Call it bloody-mindedness, but there's another reason. My beat, if you could call it that, is downtown theatre, theatre that takes place below 14th Street in Manhattan, several miles to the south of Times Square. And honestly, from my point-of-view, there haven't been hordes of theatre-mad holiday tourists stampeding south to get their American theatre fix, far from the dark marquees of 42nd Street.

And, I confess, I have a bit of Edmund Wilson's "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" attitude about the whole affair. Broadway hasn't been a major player in the development of American drama and theatre in nearly half-a-century, arguably since Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? had its world premiere there in 1962. Most of the great American plays produced since then have originated off-Broadway and at regional stages like the Mark Taper Forum (Tony Kushner's Angels in America) and San Francisco's Magic Theatre (Sam Shepard's Buried Child). Theresa Rebeck's current Broadway show Mauritius had its 2006 world premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company. (It's still running under a separate contract, by the way.) And Angels in America and Buried Child would still be considered great American plays, even had they never reached the Broadway stage at all.

Over the past few weeks I've been making my usual rounds of the off-off-Broadway theatres and the parties to which theatre artists are inevitably drawn, and within these two weeks I don't think I've heard one word about the strike uptown. Down here, it's business as usual: performances, hundreds of them each week, in theatres ranging from well-appointed performance arenas to grungy black-box theatres and basement spaces. Given the progressive political attitudes of theatre artists, there's general sympathy for the union, but very few consider themselves informed enough about the issues to have a strong opinion one way or the other.

There's been no surge in audience attendance downtown; the holiday visitors are staying uptown. As well they should, because these audiences don't want necessarily to keep in touch with new developments in American theatre (if they want that, they can visit the regional theatres; Wall Street Journal theatre critic Terry Teachout, week after week, does as much as he can on that score). They are here to go to a show on Broadway, that generic name for the palatial, beautiful midtown theatres that host musicals and spectacles, as much a part of New York as the Empire State Building, the Christmas display windows at the department stores and the Circle Line tour.

In a way, Charles Isherwood's recent much-abused column in the New York Times suggesting non-theatrical New York alternatives to Broadway was spot on: these tourists want to be in New York, not necessarily in a theatre. And if they want to be in a theatre, it's a Broadway theatre they want to visit.

And that's fine. But mistaking Broadway for the art of theatre is like mistaking Disney's Fantasyland for fantasy: they're at best pre-packaged, mercenary simulations of those life essentials, not the thing itself. Appropriate, then, that early talks between management and labour were arranged by the Disney Theatrical Group, which owns a few Broadway theatres itself, though its show Mary Poppins is still running, like Mauritius, under a separate contract.

There's some question as to whether Broadway will be able to recover, as Matt Wolf wrote last week. I'm more optimistic than Matt; a strike at Disneyland would not bring the Disney empire crashing down either. Next Christmas will still bring crowds to see those musicals and shows that have the imprimatur of a producer (the Disney company, Oprah Winfrey) who has a recognisable presence in the media, or are somehow pre-sold (a musical featuring the songs of Abba, an adaptation of a Mel Brooks film). Alternatively, if it's a straight play they go to see, it will likely be one with a Hollywood star attached, like the upcoming Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming featuring Ian McShane of TV's Deadwood and Michael McKean of This Is Spinal Tap and other Christopher Guest films.

If anything will suffer in the wake of the strike it will be the health of the American straight play on Broadway. Broadway's straight plays may appeal more to local theatregoers rather than the out-of-town trade. If they're burned, New Yorkers may indeed turn further downtown and to the off-Broadway non-profits for their straight drama fix. Professional American baseball never fully recovered from the 1994-95 strike that lasted for several months, but the life of American sports generally, especially football, has flourished.

Concessions will be made on both sides because an end to the strike is in everybody's best interests. Estimates of just how much money is being drained from the New York economy by the strike vary wildly - the amount is substantial no matter who you listen to. But make no mistake: It's not all American theatre and drama at risk here, but a very small, ultimately inconsequential sliver of it. If all of Broadway were to shut down permanently overnight, my friends and I downtown will still make theatre. A little of the glamour would be gone, but only a little, and the art would remain.